This week the “Hey, Hey, Hey” team lead by the Maylee’s (also Paul and Peter) talk the week in Gaming News… well, kinda? Paul hijacks the episode to talk about this years “Annual Showcase Season” but not before Zahra gets freaky in horror romance Sucker for Love: Date to Die For from Akabaka. Then Paul talks the week in game announcements including; Tempopo from Witch Beam, Mixtape from Beethoven and Dinosaur, Mars First Logistics from Shape Shop, Wanderstop from Ivy Road, Pinball Spire from Apparition Games, and Techno Banter from Dexai Arts.
This week on Zed Games. The team talks Gaming News from Caroline, focussing on the vibes of the new Australian Pokestore. In reviews, Zahra tries to help out the busy gamer, while Tobi zones in on the solarpunk idler Rusty’s Retirement from Mister Morris Games. Paul then talks back to the NPCs in Consortium VR from IDGi, and takes a quick look at the horror puzzler Flathead published by DREAD XP.
PC games can be played on the Playstation VR2 via an adaptor which will be available on the 7th of August, meaning that in addition to the VR games available on the PS5, the VR2 can be used to play the many VR games available on steam.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to become even more mod-able in the near future with the announcement of patch number 7. The update is set to launch in September and the headliner is the official modding toolkit which will allow for improved compatibility as well as a more convenient experience. The toolkit will undergo testing via a two-phase process the first being a closed alpha (which started June 3) with a small team of mod creators to further develop the modding tools and in July the closed beta will kick off with around 1000 players (which anyone can sign up for) who will test the mods that were created during the alpha.
But that’s not all for lucky number seven, Larian Studios has also indicated that the patch will also include improved evil ending (for all you sickos out there) and some more bug fixes.
As part of Screen Queensland’s game project funding (which since it’s last round has been doubled) 14 projects will receive altogether a total of 1 million AUD and another 3 projects will receive 1.1 million AUD.
The full list of games funded is available on the Screen Queensland website (but a quick shout-out to Schrodinger’s Cat Burglar which I’ve gotten to play at the last couple of Queensland game festivals and is absolutely delightful).
Applications for the next round of funding opens on Friday 7 June and closes on Sunday 21 July.
Pokemon Centre Online Launches for Australia and New Zealand
And now for the most important piece of news of all time, the Australian and New Zealand Pokemon Centre website has been soft launched and my money will never be safe again.
The Pokemon Centres are online stores that sell exclusive items like plushes and the like (lifesize Mareep plush my beloved) but ship only to specific regions; America, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan with this launch putting Australia and New Zealand on the list.
No word yet when the hard launch of the website will be or what differences there will be if any from the soft launch but I am eager to shovel my money into the gaping maw of the pokemon company.
Only Hazel in the studio today as we wished Cam farewell today – watch this space for a Cam Special celebrating the life Cameron “Gazunta” Davis coming tomorrow. This will be a long form clip edit from all his contributions on Zed Games. On THIS show Zahra does the #GamingNews talking Deku Lego, Lol, and more. Maylee then takes a challenge in the cute, comfy, dog featured, puzzle game Railbound from Afterburn Games. And Paul takes a look into the creepy dungeon crawler with a typing twist – Cryptmaster from Akupara Games.
Yahahaha! The Great Deku Tree, a wise and monotonous figure in The Legend of Zelda series, can be in your home, after significant assembly, for the low-low price of $450. Oh yeah, this is a big one, with 2,500 bricks it stands at about 33cm tall once constructed. Not only that, it’s a 2-in-1 build, with one mimicking the tree’s form in Ocarina of Time, and the other taking after Breath of the Wild. Basically, one has green leaves, the other has pink blossoms.
Included with the build are figures for both versions of Link and Zelda, Hestu, and some Koroks, and there’s even a little sidebuild that your kids can put together while you put the tree together.
Rainbow Six Siege Subscription
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, the online tactical shooter, will be changing to a monthly subscription system, and the news has not made Ubisoft very popular. The change was announced during BLAST Rainbow Six Major in Manchester, with quite a few boos in the audience. You can opt for a cool $10 USD a month, or $80 USD a year, giving you access to exclusive monthly content drops, Legendary items, access to the premium Battle Pass, and a lot more. You’ll also get to skip 10 levels each month.
This is a separate purchase to each season’s battle pass.
Diablo Be Damned
Diablo 4 update released, and version 1.4.1 has had some teething issues. The update was supposed to balance some areas of the game and fix up a few bugs, but instead it disabled Masterworking, an endgame crafting system that was only added recently.
If the fixes worked, then Masterworking was only meant to become cheaper, costing less gold. Oops!
LoL $400
League of Legends has released some special tribute bundles dedicated to the newest additions to Riot’s “Hall of Legends”, Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok. These bundles aren’t new, and often contain skins for the heroes, finishers, cosmetic items, currency, and more.
The three bundles are called the ‘Risen Legend Collection’, the ‘Immortalized Legend Collection’, and the ‘Signature Immortalized Legend Collection’, going for $60, $375, and almost $680 AUD respectively. It does contain a ‘Final Boss Faker’ title, themed signature move, 100 pass levels, and more, although some fans commented that they expected an Ahri statue to be included for that price.
What Can $700 Million Get You?
Not Star Citizen, that’s for sure! Star Citizen, in development by Cloud Imperium Games, is a multiplayer game based around trading and combat simulations. It was originally announced in 2012, when their kickstarter launched and concluded successfully, raising $6 million, with an estimated release date in June 2014. During development, modules of the game have been released to tide over fans, but the extended development time has garnered a lot of criticism.
Through the sale of ships, ranging in price from $20 to a few grand, and crowdfunding, Cloud Imperium Games has managed to raise over $700 million. So maybe a release date is within the foreseeable future. I doubt that though.
News Nibbles!
Destiny 2: The Final Shape is upon us, and fans seem to be pretty hype about it. The newest trailer shows that yes, Cayde-6 is alive (and we’ve known that for a while) but also Zavala appears to be having a continuation of his midlife crisis. In unrelated news: I’m still in love with Ikora.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be coming to Game Pass at launch, so you could get that CoD fix for a fraction of the price.
Days of Play is here! Running until June 12th, it’s Sony’s season of sales, and coming with it will be an assortment of bonus games for Premium members, which includes PSVR2 games like Walkabout Mini Golf and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, or PS2 games like Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.
Speaking of game events, we’ve got Summer Game Fest and Devolver Direct on the 8th of June, Wholesome Direct, Women Led Game Showcase, Latin America Game Showcase, and Future Games Show on the 9th of June, Ubisoft Forward, Xbox Games Showcase, and PC Gaming Show on the 10th, and of course, most importantly, the Queensland Games Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse on the 22nd of June.
And now for some upcoming games!
May 30th
Horizon Chase 2 – PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XSX
Umbraclaw – PC
June 3rd
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road – PC
June 4th
Life by You – PC
Destiny 2: The Final Shape – PC, PlayStation 5, XSX
Star Wars Hunters – Android, Switch
Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game – PC, PlayStation 5, XSX/S
This week on Zed Games Zahra, Hazel, and Maylee gather for Paul’s Gaming News, and talk modded Witcher and the new king of announcements – Summer Games Fest. Maylee talks picture puzzles in a review of Tell Me Your Story. Finally we bid farewell to one of our team, Cameron “Gazunta” Davis. A more in depth chat to come next week.
On Zed Games, Maylee and Caroline bring the chao of Zed Games to your earholes this week talking Gaming News headlines focusing on the ick coming to games through AI. Paul preaches to us the virtues of El Shaddai: Ascention of the Metatron, and then the team discusses the good and bad of early access while talking Hades II.
No longer console wars, but console turmoil with Xbox and PlayStation going head-to-head in who can create the most controversy this week.
In Xbox News, last week Microsoft announced the studio closures of Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse Studios, and according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier it’s not the end. Staff under the Xbox umbrella have been told more cuts are on the way and voluntary buyout offers have been reportedly sent to other ZeniMax Media staff. While addressing the closures Xbox president Sarah Bond claimed this was in response to a “flat” industry over the last year, however leaked audio and emails from within Xbox claims the company is spread too thin and needs to double down on high impact titles, despite posting $15.6 billion US in revenue so far in this financial year. Hi-Fi Rush from Tango Gameworks has been at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Xbox closures. When the announcement was made by Xbox the studio was not only working on a pitch for a sequel to Hi-Fi Rush it was also seeking to hire new staff. The team was reportedly blinesided by the announcement with Creative Director John Johanas telling Eurogamer last month after they won a BAFTA that the team was in a “good situation” and was able to take risks and own their creative freedom. In the townhall at Xbox the day after the fateful announcement, head of Xbox Games Studios Matt Booty told staff that they “…need smaller games that give us prestige and awards.” Cinematic Editor of Naam based Summerfall Studios, Ethan Taylor weighed in on twitter with
“The $375,000,000 Microsoft payout to known dog scum Bobby Kotick, could pay for the estimated salaries of both Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks employees combined for the next 17 and a half years”
On the other side, PlayStation this week tried its hardest to imitate the Titanic in the fallout of the the announcement last week that Helldivers 2 was to require a PlayStation Network or PSN account. To give a scope to the issue Sony Interactive Entertainment or SIE are facing, Helldivers 2 is SIE’s golden egg, with a boom in players that hasn’t been seen since the pandemic. This choice to enforce PSN Account linking after release led to the review bombing in steam, and the resultant refunds through steam leading to steam delisting the game from all countries where creating a PSN Account is unavailable. Sony eventually capitulated and stated that the link would “…not be moving forward.” However, it doesn’t end there. SIE has continued to support the removal and delisting of Helldivers 2 from countries without PSN coverage, much to the surprise of the team behind Helldivers. In fact, steam users who have pre purchased upcoming PC release of Ghosts of Tsushima Directors Cut and who live in those same countries are receiving auto-refunds. The refund comes with the attached message,
“You are receiving a refund for a game you pre-purchased – Ghost of Tsushima. The publisher of this game is now requiring a secondary account to play portions of this game – and this account cannot be created from your country.”
So what’s the future at Sony? Looks like the company wants to see a future in live service titles, after seeing a decline in PS5 console sales. They plan on doing this with an expansion in the content of Destiny 2: The Final Shape DLC coming in June, and the upcoming release of Concord. This is even after the report that devs are concerned with the sustainability of live service titles. In the time being, SIE has finally announced the replacement for Jim Ryan, the previous CEO who stepped down September 2023. This will require some changes, as the position will be replaced with a “multi-pronged leadership structure” with PlayStation Studios’ CEO moving to SIE’s new Studio Business Group, taking charge of first-party operations, and Hideaki Nishino being promoted from the SVP of the Platform Experience Group to the new CEO of SIE’s Platform Business Group. Nishino will oversee third-party relations and internal tech development. Only time will tell if this leads to any changes in the future at SIE and PlayStation.
In other news, here’s some quick Gaming Bytes;
Warner seems to be in the process of transferring the ownership of Adult Swim Games back to the developers. After Warner announced their inability return titles to devs because of “logistical and resource complaints” the dev of Small Radios Big Televisions, and the maker of Duck Game have both received notice that the titles will be returning to them. And now most titles announced in the Adult Swim closure have returned to steam.
If you thought the new characters in the new DLC for Stellaris were AI, you were right. Not only is the text AI driven, but so are the voices. However, bucking the trend, the actors for the two characters are receiving royalties for using their voiceprints.
In probably unsurprising news, EA is again floating the idea of putting targeted advertisements into full-price AAA games.
It seems that local game devs in Vietnam complained about Steam’s vast portfolio made them unable to compete in the local market and Vietnam Authorities followed through. With all Vietnamese ISPs blocking all access to Steams website and launcher.
Cyberpunk 2077 has hit a 95% positive review rating on steam after it’s dismal (and review bombed) release.
And now for some upcoming games. Thursday May 16, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut is coming to PC and multiplayer crossplay. If you enjoyed it in 1995, or want to play something inspired by DOOM and Quake, then PO’ed: Definitive Edition is coming to your mainstays. Or get psychic in the sequel to 2064: Read Only Memories, with Read Only Memories: Neurodiver. Coming to PC, Switch, and next gen consoles. Friday May 17 brings us the next chapter in Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, Morbid: The Lords of Ire, or if you’re craving something different, try My Little Pony—A Zephyr Heights Mystery. Both coming to PC, and Consoles. Tuesday May 21st brings us the award winning Paper Trail, which is releasing to your favs. The new Ubisoft free to play shooter XDefiant is coming to PC and next gen consoles. And according to fans – the under advertisedSenua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is coming to PC, Xbox X and S.
This week on Zed Games Paul leads the team with Zahra And Caroline taking the to the mics to bring us all in gaming news, reviews, community and culture. But first, Cam brings us the week in old man #GamingNews, just so the team can clarify the Helldivers Misinformation Mixup and Paul talks the wholesome surprise stream of the Indie Brew Aussie Indi Showcase. Then Paul is confused at the lovely unique story of Highwater and its Pirate Radio DJ from Demagog Studio, and Zahra gets stuck climbing into the VR title The Pirate Queen from Singer Studios. Paul rounds things off to talk narrative games in the upcoming digital festival LudoNarraCon 2024.
Join us with Hazel, Caroline and Paul to talk this week in Gaming News with some Maple Story Karma & Fallout Fallout. Paul then takes the long way round to look at the stunning graphics of the early access title No Rest For The Wicked from Moon Studios. And Caroline gets religious in the Catholic guilt filled something something soulslike something something metroidvania games Blasphemous 1 and 2 from developer The Game Kitchen.
